Fox Business to chase Everyman -- a futile pursuit?

With newest cable network, Murdoch tries to link Wall Street and Main Street

By

RussBritt

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Is there no room in Middle America for "ticker tape talk"?

That's what a baker -- well, an actor playing a baker -- says in a promotional dramatization on Fox Business Network's Web site. The small-businessman character says he's got no corner office, no yacht and doesn't go out for $400 business lunches. But he says he could use some practical advice on how to more efficiently make cupcakes.

"If I could get really good advice like that without all that ticker-tape talk, that would be really good," the actor says, with a bluegrass melody playing in the background.

If promos like these on the Fox Business Web site are any indication, financial news coverage could be in for a massive overhaul.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
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wants you to believe that Wall Street and Main Street are one, and it's creating a business news channel for the proverbial Everyman. What's uncertain is whether Everyman will be watching when the new channel has its debut on Monday.

Never one to shy away from shaking up the status quo, Murdoch seems bent on hitting financial news coverage where he thinks it ain't. But unlike his highly successful Fox News Channel -- which tapped into a huge, built-in conservative audience with pent-up demand for its style of news coverage -- Murdoch is betting that viewers will feel that business news is more critical to their lives than the multitude of entertainment or sports choices out there.

To date, the public hasn't exactly clamored en masse to televised business news. And Murdoch may have to generate bigger numbers in order to get the kind of advertising dollars that rivals capture by catering to more well-to-do viewers.

Fox Business Network officials would not comment for this story, and the Web site had yet to offer a program lineup as of the week's end. News Corp. is in the process of finalizing its deal to acquire Dow Jones & Co.
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parent of MarketWatch, the publisher of this report.

Coverage of the financial markets largely has been geared toward investors and the wealthy, and that has been particularly true with its key rivals in televised business news, CNBC and the Bloomberg Channel.

The two channels make no bones about it; they tilt their coverage toward those interested in making money, and lots of it. Recent data from Mendelsohn Media Research shows the average household income of CNBC watchers is $184,000. Bloomberg's is $199,000.

"We just don't really focus on whatever anyone else is doing," said Judith Czelusniak, spokeswoman for Bloomberg, a privately held financial information provider. Its television efforts concentrate on those who subscribe to Bloomberg financial terminals, she said.

"We're not trying to be all things to all people. We're not populist. We want to be popular, but we're not populist," said Mark Hoffman, president of CNBC, a unit of General Electric Co.'s
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NBC Universal division. "We're unabashedly capitalist. We don't apologize for that."

Small viewership

Nielsen ratings show that CNBC has averaged 210,000 viewers throughout the day thus far this year. CNBC officials say that in the 25-54 age group, the network is averaging 85,000 viewers. They point out that figure only cites households, and doesn't include the multitude of people at businesses and on trading floors who keep their televisions constantly tuned to the channel. Further, a large portion of household viewers is over the age of 54.

Hoffman says the network has been making a healthy living of late from affluent advertisers willing to pay more to cater to the business channel's small, but powerful viewing group.

Nielsen doesn't keep track of Bloomberg's share numbers.

Meanwhile, News Corp. is going after an audience that currently pays scant attention to business coverage, using taglines like, "The way you think about business is about to change." And the Web site actually does feature street-sign graphics side-by-side for Main Street and Wall Street. The underlying motto between them says: "It's the same street."

"I think that's an admirable goal," said Brad Berens, a Los Angeles-based marketing consultant. "It'll be interesting to see if Everyman really cares."

Part of the challenge is that Fox Business will have less room to work with than its rivals. CNBC is seen in 90 million cable-connected homes, while Bloomberg is in 50 million homes.

Fox Business will only be in 30 million homes to start, though it will be carried in all major markets, company officials say. Major cable firms AT&T
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Comcast
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Time Warner
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and Charter Communications
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are including it in their service, as well as DirecTV Group Inc.
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the satellite TV provider controlled by News Corp.

"I think when Fox News started out, it was just in [network president] Roger [Ailes'] home," joked Andrew Leckey, a former CNBC anchor who is currently director of the Donald W. Reynolds national center for business journalism at Arizona State University.

While at CNBC, Leckey worked for Ailes, who is overseeing the inauguration of Fox Business. Leckey says there is sure to be heated competition, particularly with the combative Ailes in the mix. Fox surely will try to steer those who tune into its general news channel to the financial network and detour around CNBC.

"This is going to be a lot of fun," Leckey said. "He will find ways to make fun of them and taunt them."

Ailes already has taken a few shots. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, he quipped that CNBC was trying to one-up him on being patriotic, so they said, "We'll name it 'America's Business Network' and take that away from Ailes."

But can a business channel play in Peoria? Leckey thinks it could.

"I think there is a market for it," he said. "We don't really know because nobody has waded into the water successfully."

Regardless of whether Main Street tunes in, Murdoch will have plenty of time to make adjustments, Leckey says. Murdoch is offering a healthy supply of cash to give the new channel time to grow, and perhaps, eventually overtake his rivals in viewership the way his Fox News Channel eclipsed CNN.

Leckey points out it was inadequate financing by CNN, a Time Warner Inc.
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unit, that contributed to the downfall of its CNN-fn, a defunct financial news channel.

Views on success

Further evidence of Murdoch's intentions for the Web site show up in a video featuring an actress, an antique dealer and a family man -- no actors involved here -- and they all discuss general views on how to get ahead.

The conversations have very little to do with finance or business. Rather, they focus on the career and personal financial goals of the interviewees. In fact, the closest anyone comes to talking finance is when the family man says: "To me, success is more about living our lives than about stockpiling wealth."

Fox Business's anchors and reporters also delve deeply into non-business talk on the Web site. The cadre of personalities is led by Neil Cavuto, a one-time CNBC personality who later became Fox News Channel's managing editor for business news and host of the network's "Your World" and "Cavuto On Business."

Also billed as one of the on-air leaders is Alexis Glick, another CNBC alumnus, and a former trader at Morgan Stanley. There's also David Asman, a Fox News anchor and former Wall Street Journal reporter.

The Web site offers profiles on a number of others, all with the usual glitz found among news anchors throughout the television universe. Some, however, have initiated their own blogs, an apparent effort to personalize business news. There's also a hint of playing to the sensibility of "red state" crowds, a style that sometimes earns Fox News derision.

One personality, Cheryl Casone, complains of how women in Manhattan commonly spend $500 on a pair of shoes or $1,000 for a purse. Another, Cody Willard, wonders why more attention hasn't been paid in the scientific community to a phenomenon known as "solar dimming" as opposed to global warming.

And anchor-to-be Jenna Lee tells her audience that although she has rock music programmed into her iPod, she prefers to tune into country music artists such as Tim McGraw and Carrie Underwood, a winner several seasons back of the Fox Network's song competition, "American Idol."

"The Dixie Chicks are in constant rotation," Lee writes of the controversial trio. "Justin Timberlake, on the other hand, doesn't have a chance."

It's unclear how all this is relevant to business coverage. There are concerns in some circles that Fox Business will look a lot like Fox News, with many of the same conservative sensibilities.

Media Matters for America, a watchdog group, issued a statement on Friday taking Cavuto and several other Fox Business personalities to task over supposed inaccuracies and pro-Bush administration coverage. The group speculated that it would continue under Fox Business.

In the end, though, Fox Business and CNBC may peacefully co-exist, given the latter's willingness to cater to a small but affluent audience, says Chris Roush, associate professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina, and director of the Carolina Business News Initiative.

"I don't think [CNBC] should be worried. They're going after totally different audiences," he said.

And if Fox's intentions help drive home financial news to uninitiated investors, it can't hurt. Televised business news sorely lacks information on how, say, a merger deal is pertinent to average readers, Roush said.

"There are millions of people out there who need that information," he said.

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